Oakland, CA
Oracle Arena
Oracle Arena
Had a great end of the week this week, taking in both of the shows Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band put on here in Oakland Thursday and Friday nights. For openers, I have this to say...
BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!!!
Anyone who's ever seen a Springsteen show knows that they are always high energy, great time, rock and roll shows. This past week was no different with two incredible nights. The Friday night show went on sale first and I got a ticket the minute the show went on sale and was a little disappointed that the best seat I could get was a seat to the side of the stage, so when the Thursday night show was added about 2 weeks ago I said "gotta try again!" Best I could do for THAT show was BEHIND the stage. Well, hell. Fortunately, what I thought would be a disappointment seat-wise, turned out to be anything but.
Thursday night I raced to BART from work, but even if traffic had been breezy smooth, work to the Millbrae BART station plus the ride to the Coliseum station is still a 2 hour trek! UGH, no time for dinner and please oh please oh please don't have a line for will call or I'm gonna be wiped out before the show even starts! Fortunately got through will call in record time so grabbed something to eat inside and went to take my seat. Lesson one -- Row 27 behind the stage is NOT a bad seat -- the rows start at about number 15. Turned out that my seat was dead center of the row right behind the stage AND was the last row in the section with wall behind me so I could stand and dance all I wanted with no one throwing things behind me! Woo hoo! (Of course, I had forgotten that Bruce really doesn't allow sitting at his shows and makes sure everyone is standing up!) So 7:30 comes and goes and of course the show doesn't start when the ticket said it would. 8:00 comes and goes and the two seats to my left and four seats to my right are still totally empty. Could it be that I've got a huge chunk of space all to my self at a near-sell out show?! Yep, it could be -- I had a ton of room to dance and bop around all night long.
8:15 Bruce and the band came out in total darkness and then kicked straight in to "Radio Nowhere" from his new CD Magic. If you've not heard it yet, it's just a kick ass rock song and great opener. The show rolled on from there and I had a great view of the band, the stage, and the CROWD. Kinda felt like a rock star myself looking out at what the guys on stage were seeing. Naturally, the crowd goes wild. If you've never been to a Springsteen concert, you really don't know what you're missing. I was up and dancing from the first note and barely sat all night long. There was a group of people a ways down the row from me and one of the guys kept coming over to dance and high five at different parts of the show. There's just that much energy going on.
Thursday night's set list was filled with new material -- 9 of the 12 songs on Magic were played, plus a song off Patti Scialfa's new CD. That made 10 of the 20+ songs totally new and reasonably unfamiliar to the audience and while the band played the hell out of them with enough energy to keep the crowd with them, the energy of the crowd wasn't the level of previous shows I'd seen. The album's only been out for three weeks (wasn't Bruce nice to give me a present for my birthday?) and I've played the hell out of it since I got it and I probably know about 75% of the words to 75% of the songs. Most other people in the crowd knew far less. That didn't stop him from having the crowd sing back on "Girls in Summer Clothes" during the encore. And ya know, I loved it. Too many established performers don't believe enough in their new material and/or their fans to really go out and sell it to them on stage, which considering that's how so many legendary acts got famous in the first place. If you've got it, play it, believe in it, work the crowd so they're into it.
The crowd Thursday night did get into the new material, though not like they did with the old familiar favorites where they would sing along and drown out Bruce at points. The show closed out with a rousing version of "Badlands" which had all 20,000 people singing along at the top of their lungs and, to my mind, has one of the greatest lines in rock history -- "For the ones who had a notion/A notion deep inside/That it ain't no sin/To be glad you're alive" and the crowd WAS so alive.
Of course, no Springsteen show is over until you hear "Born to Run" and that was the third song of the 5-song encore (following "Thunder Road" which the audience ALMOST took over on, but lost the lyric somewhere in the first verse). With full house lights on and everyone singing along I could watch that every night. He closed out the night with "Dancing in the Dark" (ironically with the full house lights still on) and an Irish jig of a tune he wrote as part of his Seeger Sessions work "American Land" which was just great fun. Headed back to BART for the hour ride home and got ready to do it all again on Friday night and had a nice bookend moment to my night as "Born to Run" was the last tune played on my iPod as I pulled into the Millbrae station.
I wasn't nearly as harried getting to the show on Friday as I had been the night before and when I got to my side-view seat, I was again pleasantly surprised. Close to the stage, on the aisle of a 3-seat row. I chatted with the couple sitting next to me before the show started and it was the wife's first time at a Springsteen show and she was so excited it was incredible. I told her that the show the night before had been fantastic and she'd really enjoy it but she'd have to calm down a little since the band wouldn't take the stage until 8:15.
Once again Bruce and band came out and kicked off with "Radio Nowhere" and followed it up with one of my all time favorite tunes "No Surrender" from the Born in the USA album. I love love love that song and my night was completely made by then. The set list on Friday was significantly different than Thursday night -- only 6 new songs and no Patti song. According to his official website, they debuted three songs on Friday night -- "Two Hearts", "Racing in the Street", and "Working on the Highway." Every one of them played to perfection. Making that change in the set put even more energy into the sell-out crowd and people were on their feet most of the night dancing and singing along.
The energy level on Friday night was definitely higher than Thursday, and the response to the new songs was stronger, especially for the moving rocker "Last to Die" and the catchy "Living in the Future". It's pretty incredible when you look down the set lists for this tour (which can be found here*) and you see the catalog of songs performed. Between the radio hits and the concert anthems, there's just not a weak point anywhere in this show, no songs where you think "okay, I'm a bit tired of this one, move along please."
I was talking to one of my co-workers before heading out to the shows this week and he was telling me how he doesn't particularly enjoy concerts as they seldom live up to his expectations. Having seen Springsteen about 6 times now -- both with and with out the E Street Band -- I can say I have never been disappointed, usually it's beyond my expectations. I also recognized that one thing I take away from most any concert I attend is that two hours (or more) of stress free, live in the moment, let the music wash over you joy. Makes it worth every penny of the over priced concert tickets (though I will say at $93 before fees, Springsteen is pretty reasonable considering what he could charge) and hassles of transportation.
Finally, if you've never seen Springsteen, what the hell are you waiting for? Go. Now. I promise you will have a great time.
*The original link went to Bruce's official website which will post set lists for the shows, but it appears they've pulled anything before 2009, so that goes to the fan-zine Backstreets which pulls reports from fans.
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